Two Thousand Years of Friendship
by lilyofthevalley2
Summary: Kyouraku Shunsui, Ukitake Jyuushirou, and Unohana Retsu have known each other for over 2000 years, years of war and peace, joy and tragedy, triumph and failure.  These are some of their stories.  Contains Ukitake x Unohana, Shunsui x Nanao, and others.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Happy birthday, Ebil!

**Theme:** Delicate**  
>Characters:<strong> Kyouraku Shunsui, Ukitake Jyuushirou**  
>Pairings:<strong> N/A**  
>Rating:<strong> K**  
>Warnings:<strong> N/A

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><p>People sometimes thought Jyuushirou was delicate, Shunsui reflected as he shifted in the cushioned but still uncomfortable hospital chair. His friend had dozed off now, face still ashy-pale, even against his bright white hair and white pillowcase. Dry lips surrounded a ventilator tube, pipes trailing away towards a machine close to Shunsui's chair, and another line connected his friend to an IV line. Shunsui rubbed his hands over his face slowly, eyes sandy and dry from tiredness. Sometimes, these trips all started to blur together in his mind. The sudden coughing, seeing bright red blood. Waiting for it to pass, and growing concern and worry when it didn't, getting his friend to Fourth, and then pacing nervously in the lobby until he could see his friend again. Then, the long vigil, waiting for Ukitake to fight through it.<p>

See, that was the thing about Jyuu. You could think, at first, that he was delicate. He was lightly built for such a tall man, and he got sick far too easily. Even Shunsui had made that mistake at first, dismissing his roommate as nothing but a weak noble kid with no idea of the real world, and no place in a real fight.

Of course, their first actual fight—more of a brawl, really, when Shunsui finally said the wrong (or right) thing and pushed Jyuu over the edge to physical violence—disabused him of that notion. Shunsui grinned tightly. Jyuushirou lacked the experience of dozens of bar fights, but he was wiry and surprisingly tough. And most importantly, he _never _gave up. Shunsui had him pinned down at one point in that first fight, and he was willing to call an end to it, but Jyuu managed to shove him off and kept right on fighting until they were both exhausted.

That was the thing he admired and respected most about Jyuu. Shunsui would fight and push and refuse to accept things as long as possible, but at the end of the day, he was a realist. Sometimes, shit happened and you couldn't change it. There were battles you couldn't win. But Jyuushirou would keep on pushing and fighting way beyond the point where it made more sense to give up. Discretion is the better part of valor, Shunsui liked to point out. But it was reassuring too. Because Jyuushirou would never, ever give in to his illness. It might beat him some day (Shunsui tried not to think about that), but it wouldn't be because his friend had given up.

Sometimes Shunsui wondered, in rare moments of self-examination, if part of the reason for what many people considered his recklessness was an unconscious attempt to avoid outliving his best friend. Because honestly, Jyuushirou was far from delicate. He was by far the stronger of the two.

Ukitake turned a little in the bed, as much as he could with the ventilator and IV lines restricting his movement. Shunsui roused himself from his brown study to watch, feigning casualness in case Jyuushirou woke up. And indeed, after a few moments, his friend opened his eyes, a few instants of panic on his face before he processed where he was and why his lungs wouldn't obey him. "Yare, yare," Shunsui murmured, inwardly light with relief. There was always the gnawing fear during these trips, no matter how strong he knew his friend was, that one of these days the illness was going to be stronger. But today, it wasn't. His friend was all right. "I see you decided to rejoin the land of the living," he teased lightly, taking a wet towel from the bed and squeezing it out before handing it to his friend. Ukitake used it to rub his eyes and face clear, glancing at the window to try and determine the time. "It doesn't matter," said Shunsui, answering the unspoken question. "Rukia-chan has things well in hand at Thirteenth. Don't worry so much and focus on resting and getting better, Casanova."

Ukitake rolled his eyes at the nickname but nodded. Still, he glanced at Shunsui pointedly and raised an eyebrow. Shunsui laughed. "Yes, yes, I'll get some rest as well, old friend." He put his hand over his heart dramatically. "Even though I won't be able to sleep because my heart is broken by the latest slight from my lovely Nanao-chan…"

And as Ukitake grinned good-naturedly around the ventilator, Shunsui leaned forward and began telling him the latest stories and gossip, while the horizon outside the window slowly began to turn pink with dawn.


	2. Chapter 2

**Theme:** Hypocrisy  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Unohana Retsu, Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni  
><strong>Pairings: <strong>N/A  
><strong>Rating:<strong> K+  
><strong>Warnings: <strong>N/A

* * *

><p>Retsu sat in a perfect seiza on a mat in Yamamoto-sensei's office. He hadn't spoken since she finished telling him her concerns, and that had been several minutes ago. She fought down the urge to fidget; her teacher would speak when it was time. Nonetheless, she couldn't help but worry. It was a serious matter, and she wasn't sure how he would react.<p>

"There is no great crime in taking pleasure in your work, Retsu," he said finally. "A shinigami's job is a duty; there is nothing wrong with taking pleasure in doing one's duty."

Retsu hesitated a moment, not wanting him to think less of her, but troubled all the same. "Sensei, I wish I could claim those motives. However, this…when we purify hollows—even when we fight other souls for the sake of Seireitei, that is duty. This…this was personal. I…allowed myself to become too angry. To hate. To _enjoy_ not only hating, but killing, and causing pain as I did so." She felt nauseous as she said it. She could still hear Minazuki's feral call singing through her blood, deadly and terrifying, could still see the look on their faces as she swooped down on them, inexorable as a tidal wave. The surprise turning to panic, turning to horror. And even now, she felt the echo of the triumph she had felt then. Her eyes dropped, tracing the dark lines of her shihakusho, reluctant to close her eyes lest she see the images burned onto her eyelids. "I don't deserve to be called a healer, Sensei," she murmured. "I don't even deserve this uniform."

Sensei leaned forward onto the desk and out of the corner of her eye she saw him steeple his fingers together with a sigh. "There is a great darkness inside each soul," he said. "It can be tamed, but it can never truly be conquered. However, the constant effort to defeat it is what defines us, as pure souls and as shinigami. It is what separates us from the hollows."

She looked up to meet his eyes, and his gaze seemed to pierce right through her. "We all have blood on our hands," he said gruffly. "You will be a better healer, a better shinigami for having gotten a taste for knowing that. But be warned," he said sharply, "master yourself. Go too far and any shinigami can become worse than a hollow, and if that happens," his eyes gleamed dangerously, "I'll kill you myself."

Retsu straightened and bowed deeply from her still-seated position. "Yes, Sensei," she said, a shiver running down her spine. She didn't doubt for a moment that Yamamoto-sensei would do just what he said if it came to it. But she had no intention of allowing that to happen. She stood and bowed again, more formally this time. "Thank you for your time, Yamamoto-soutaichou."

She bowed one more time and then left the room, sliding the thin door shut behind her. Outside, it was a beautiful spring day. The sakura were in bloom, and couples—mostly students from the newly-made Shinigami Academy—were everywhere, sitting together under the trees and on benches, talking and kissing. A few of them saw her as she passed. Although she smiled and inclined her head as she always had, many of them stared this time, or whispered to each other as she walked by. So, the rumors had spread around already. She shouldn't be surprised. In a way, it was a fit punishment for what she'd done. She held her head high as she walked down the familiar, dusty streets towards the infirmary where she worked. She was still technically a student there, an apprentice to the head healer. However, Kuze-sensei was already calling on her to handle many of the most difficult cases, ones even he had trouble. _You have healer's hands,_ he told her once. _It's a very rare gift._

She glanced at her hands and almost laughed. Healer hands indeed. What a hypocrite she was! Take something important, and she was as deadly and cruel as any hollow. _Don't be so proud,_ a voice in her head interrupted her. It was an odd voice, neither male nor female, and overlaid with the depth of the sea. Her zanpakuto spirit, Minazuki. He clearly wanted to talk to her, and since Retsu didn't want to bump into anything, she sat down on the nearest stone bench and leaned back against the trunk of a maple tree, closing her eyes as she did so. Immediately, she found herself deep underwater, on the many-colored reef that was her zanpakuto spirit's home. The spirit itself was sitting on a throne made of coral, strumming a biwa set with abalone as its dark hair flowed in the water around its robed shoulders.

Retsu bowed respectfully, though warily. She'd seen the darker side of this spirit now, and she knew it was not as peaceful as it seemed. "I don't understand what you mean, Minazuki-san," she admitted.

"Do you think yourself so pure that you're exempt from the weaknesses all men share?"it asked, setting aside the instrument. "Do you think yourself so sacred that you have no darkness within you? Do you think yourself so holy that you have no deeper desires to be restrained?" It gazed at her, pure understanding in its eyes, knowing her better than she knew herself. "This is pride, foolish pride."

Retsu wanted to argue. She hated the way she'd felt, hated knowing she could do something like that, hated that it was so easy. "I don't _want _to be like that," she insisted.

Minauzki inclined its head. "I do not want you to be like that either," it agreed simply. "But that doesn't change the fact that the potential is there, as it is in every shinigami. Why do you think you fight us when you seek to earn shikai or bankai?"

Retsu blinked, not understanding. "I don't know. Because we have to prove that we're worthy?" she hazarded. That was what they'd been taught, at least.

Minazuki made a slight motion of its head that was neither a nod nor a shake of its head. "Partially. But more than that, to give such power to a shinigami who couldn't control himself would be like giving a flamethrower to an infant—dangerous both to the wielder and to everyone around him."

Retsu hesitated a moment as she watched the bright fish gliding through the water around the reef. "I suppose you're right," she admitted in a soft, low voice. Something tightened in her chest as she admitted it. Until then, she realized that she'd been unconsciously hoping that the darkness was something outside her, something she could blame on her zanpakuto acting up or on the circumstances. Her head dropped. It was her choice, her decision. She had to accept what was inside her, healer or not.

Minazuki sighed and floated to her side. "It's a hard lesson, Mistress," it admitted. "But it's one you have to learn. Don't throw away all the good you can do because you can also do a great deal of evil."

Retsu nodded slowly. "Yes, Minazuki-san." Closing her eyes in this world, she floated towards the surface and opened her eyes in the real world, finding them hot with tears. She blinked them back and then started to see someone standing in front of her. She jumped to her feet and brushed the petals off her uniform as she bowed hastily to Kuze-sensei, a tall healer with a balding head and half-moon glasses. "Ah, pardon me, sir," she apologized.

"Quite all right, Unohana-san…quite all right. But as I was asking, are _you_ all right?" He peered over his glasses at her curiously, as if he wasn't quite sure what was going on.

"Oh…yes, Kuze-sensei," she assured him. "Just speaking with my zanpakuto spirit. I'm sorry I didn't notice you."

"Ah," he said, apparently satisfied, "that will distract you, especially when you're rather new to it all…but did you have a good conversation?" He began to walk towards the infirmary, Retsu falling in step beside him.

Retsu nodded slowly. "Yes, sir. I believe I did." She glanced down at her hands—healing hands but also hands that could kill. She sighed and let them fall to her side. One way or another, they were _her_ hands, and she could decide what to do with them. As Kuze-sensei began to ramble on about his first time encountering his zanpakuto spirit, Retsu looked towards the infirmary ahead. She was going to be a healer, and she still had a lot of work ahead of her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Theme:** March  
><strong>Characters:<strong> Kyouraku Shunsui, Ise Nanao  
><strong>Pairings: <strong>Shunsui x Nanao  
><strong>Rating:<strong> K+  
><strong>Warnings: <strong>N/A

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><p><em>March is a miserable month,<em> Nanao thought irritably, setting down her pen on her desk and cupping her fingers to blow on them. They had a small heater in here, of course, but on damp, windy mornings like this, it didn't seem to be quite enough, particularly when you'd been sitting still and working for a while. The bases of her fingernails were tinged with blue, and her fingers felt as stiff and cold as if she'd been working outdoors instead of sitting at the desk all morning. With a sigh she stood up and stretched, walking over to the heater to warm her hands at it, careful not to touch the hot metal. She glanced out the window as she flexed her fingers. It was a foggy day outside, and the low clouds were spitting rain at the windows. What snow they'd gotten this winter had long since melted off, but there wasn't much green outside yet, let alone much in the way of flowers to break the dull brown and grey.

Reluctantly, Nanao glanced back at the stack of paperwork still on her desk. There were the usual beginning-of-the-month reports to be completed, not to mention that inspection was coming up in a few days. Kyouraku-taichou (unsurprisingly) wasn't in yet. It wasn't even nine yet, and he often didn't come until noon—although Nanao knew perfectly well that he actually passed many of those mornings watching the squad from the rooftops. Despite her complaining (and she had to complain, it was all part of the game they'd been playing for years now), he was a good captain. He knew how to lead and he knew how to teach, and despite his reputation, he was eerily observant. Still, paperwork wasn't something he'd be getting any awards for. Partly because he avoided it like the plague (he'd once tried to tell her he was deathly allergic to ink), and partially because his mind tended to wander when she actually corralled him into doing it. Gods knew how many times she'd looked over his paperwork only to find doodles, notes, or poetry in the margins.

Sometimes she wondered what the pencil-pushers down at First made of her captain's reports. Though surely they couldn't be much worse that Kusajishi-fukutaichou's reports, which were done exclusively in crayon.

Either way, it was time for her to get back to work. Nanao rubbed her hands together and turned back to her desk reluctantly. But just as she was sitting down, she was startled by the office door opening. Kyouraku taichou slouched inside, a grin on his face, and sheltering something in his hands. "Ah, Nanao-chan, hard at work already! Such a devoted fukutaichou—and adorable too," he teased.

"Somebody has to be," she deadpanned, pushing her glasses up her nose. She looked at his hands. "What are you hiding there?" Knowing her taichou, it could be anything from his newest batch of poetry to—gods forbid—a 'super sexy' bikini he'd bought for her with Ran's advice.

His grin only grew wider as he presented a bunch of crocuses to her—bright yellow and cheerful. "I saw these hiding near the wall today. I thought, it would be a shame not to share them, pretty as they are. Although Nanao-chan is much prettier than any flower."

She rolled her eyes at the effusive praise, but she had to admit to herself that they did brighten up the office a bit. "Put them in water already, taichou, or they'll wilt. And no, you can't put them on my desk; they'll be just fine in the window or on your desk," she headed him off. If she let him give her flowers, he'd probably deluge her with them. Besides, she'd never hear the end of it. Kyouraku-taichou pouted but put them in a light blue glass vase in the window on her side of the office. Nanao allowed herself a little wistful smile as she glanced at the flowers. It might be nice, really, to be deluged with flowers. It had never happened, of course, not to her. She didn't doubt that Kyouraku-taichou would be more than happy to oblige if given the slightest encouragement. But it would be a very bad idea, she knew. His relationships were like butterflies—pretty while they lasted, but short-lived. And in the end, Eighth Division was her home. It'd be too awkward to keep working here after the inevitable break-up.

Kyouraku-taichou sat on the corner of her desk and smiled at her, a wistful look on his own face to match hers. "Penny for your thoughts, Nanao-chan?" he asked.

Nanao flushed and snapped her head back to the paperwork on her desk. "Simply thinking that your energy would be better spent doing paperwork rather than accosting the local flora," she lied.

Her captain chuckled and shook his head. "My Nanao-chan is a terrible liar," he observed, which only made Nanao blush more deeply. She reached out for her pen, but his hand gently darted down to intercept hers. She glared at him but didn't pull it away. Yet. "Yare, yare," he pointed out, looking at her fingers and shaking his head. "Your hands are freezing," he said gently, taking her hand in his and rubbing them with his much larger ones. "You know, it's all right to take a break and warm up properly."

"This is hardly professional," she muttered halfheartedly, still not pulling away. Her hands _had_ been freezing all morning, but there was work to do.

Shunsui pouted as he continued to rub her hands. "But if you don't warm up your hands, they'll freeze to your pen, and then what will happen?"

Nanao rolled her eyes and pulled away finally. "Mm, true. You might have to do your own reports, in that case." Perhaps she spoke a bit sharper than she meant to, because there was a brief flash of genuine hurt in his eyes before he masked it with a grin.

"Yare, yare…my Nanao-chan is colder than the wind outside today," he teased lightly to cover it. Nanao turned back to her paperwork to cover the hesitation in her own eyes, the longing. She wasn't really as cold as she seemed. People called her that. They said that she was ruthlessly efficient, purely logical, no time for feeling or passion. An ice queen. Able to control the crazy, slapdash ways of Eighth without getting swept up in it: the perfect one to keep Kyouraku-taichou in line.

But Nanao loved. Nanao felt. Nanao had her own desires, her own dreams. Sometimes, on beautiful spring days, when the birds were singing and the sakura petals were falling, all she wanted to do was pull the pins out of her hair, set the paperwork on fire, and run outside like a child on the last day of school. She didn't _enjoy_ paperwork, after all, although doing it gave her a sense of satisfaction. And she had desires. Kyouraku was handsome—gorgeous, really. And there were times that her mind wandered, and she wondered how hard it would be to just give in and let him take her to his rooms and pull all his clothes off and… Well, it was better not to let her mind go there.

Because that was the thing. Nanao loved and worked and felt with all her being. She didn't allow others to see her feelings because they were deep and strong, and it was dangerous to let others too far inside of her barriers. She loved Kyouraku Shunsui from the bottom of her heart, but she could never let him know that. She couldn't, because while her feelings were deep and constant, his would change, and it would devastate her. No, it was better to never let him know, and stay away.

Shunsui watched Nanao bend over her paperwork, her slim hand writing smoothly, each character precise and measured as the life she'd planned out for herself. Some day, he hoped she would trust him enough to let him inside all those walls she used to keep almost everyone away. She was a beautiful woman, if only she'd let people see that, if only she'd let him show her how much she mattered. He took a report out of the 'to sign' pile she'd left on his desk and glanced over at the crocuses. He smiled and wrote a poem in the margins of the report before he signed it.

_Each year, cold winter  
>Unleashes its cold fury,<br>But still all the crocuses  
>Try again each spring.<br>So my love for Nanao-chan  
>Keeps trying until it blooms.<em>

He added the paper to the pile and glanced over at Nanao, still bent over the reports as if the fate of Seireitei hung on them. He'd keep trying. After all, it was only March. There was plenty of time for the flowers to bloom.


End file.
